A certain Hubert Chang (Full name: Hung Hsien Chang) has emerged from obscurity with the audacious claim that he helped launch the search giant in 1997 along with acknowledged co-founders and Internet demi-gods Sergey Brin andLarry Page.

Chang posted his story on the video sharing site Vimeo and it was picked up by the Web site Weberence. It spread virally from there, even to sites like YouTube and Metacafe.

In the video, Chang claims that he met Stanford professor and noted author Rajeev Motwani in 1996 while studying for a Ph.D. at New York University. Motwani, later introduced him to Brin and Page, who were students at Stanford.

Chang claims he helped Brin and Page come up with the PageRank algorithm (that today is the basis for Google's search engine and the reason for its massive success).

Chang claimed he did not stay to help found Google because he had a made a commitment to his father to finish getting his Ph.D. He also said his e-mail correspondence from 1997 was not saved because he exceeded the NYU e-mail quota for messages at the time. Hmm... Something doesn't feel quite right!!

In the video, Chang makes no claim for part ownership of the company. So that sort of rules out the "Hey, I'm Google's third daddy... gimme 1/3rd of its stocks" scenario. He said he exchanged e-mails with Brin and Page after earning his Ph.D. in late 2002, but that the communication became less friendly and only came from third parties until it finally stopped altogether.

He closes the video by noting after ten years he's telling his story. "I feel quite confident about the good side of humanity. If you could, please forward this video to your friends. Thank you."

Google has responded on Chang's claims through the following email:

"Though many people were involved with Google in its early days, it has been well documented over the past decade that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the company in September 1998."

It was frustrating and not a very pleasant experience, they're simply in a position of status, where it's awkward to fully acknowledge the past - Hubert Chang on Larry and Sergey